About the Book:History tells us that on October 3, 1849 the great master of the macabre, Edgar Allen Poe, was found wandering the streets of Baltimore, Maryland delirious and in grave distress. He was taken immediately to the Washington College Hospital, where he died at 5 a.m. on Sunday, October 7. Poe never became coherent enough to explain how he wound up in such an abysmal condition. There are a lot of theories about his death but no concrete evidence. Maybe he simply lost his way back from those incredibly dark places his writing took him.

Thomas Malafarina can only hope that his own numerous journeys into that land of darkness will not someday take its toll on him. “I would hate to think of myself thirty years from now in some home for the aged and infirm, cowering in bed with the covers tucked tightly to my chin. Would I be too afraid to leave the safety of my covers because the demons, which once only lived inside my mind, had since become as real to me as flesh and bone in my addled condition? I suppose we will have to wait and see,” mused Thomas.

In the meantime, please enjoy yet another journey into the darkest corners of Thomas Malafarina’s mind. This collection is calledMalaformed Realities, not just as a clever play on his last name, but because distorting and twisting reality into something it was never intended to be is what he enjoys doing best. “And if in the process, I manage to disturb and frighten you along the way then all the better.”

Stories included in this volume:

When They Come For You

A Love Best Served Cold

MegaSynth RP-1

Brass

Inspector 17

Hear No Evil

Big Frankie

Dinner With Andy And Meg

Cold, Cold Women

If Thine Eye Offend Thee

Homecoming

Passageways To Perniciousness

Storage

Cutaneous Horns

Icehouse

Single Panel

The Brands

Breathe

Tools Of The Trade

Zombie Party

And The Scales Fell From My Eyes (A Novella)

Excerpt:Cold, Cold Women
She had been the love of his life, the reason for his very existence. In fact, Dylan had considered her the warmest and most affectionate woman he had ever met. In his past, so many cold, cold women had hurt him so many times before taking all the love he had to give and then tossing him aside like so much garbage.

After years of dealing with this rejection Dylan had become wise to such deceitful women. He had experienced enough pain. He found he was never able give fully of himself in any relationship. He knew to watch for the signs. When he saw a woman turning cold, he would end it before he could be hurt again. After a while, he had begun to wonder if he would never find a truly caring woman.

Then he met Celia. She was everything he wanted in a woman and more. She was warm, compassionate and loving. She was the one woman who could break down the protective walls Dylan had built around himself. She taught him to give fully of himself once again without fear or concern and she had made his life complete—at least for a time.

But then he sensed that she too was beginning to grow distant and cold, just like the rest of them. These damned cold, cold women. She didn’t think he noticed, but he did. He knew the signs. After a time he realized she was no different than the others and soon she too would leave him. He was furious that he had allowed her to get so close to him, to break through his defenses, to get him to open up to her. Why had he been such a fool?

Now she lay quietly next to him in bed, her cold dead corpse growing stiff with rigor mortis. Her neck bore the blackened bruises from strangulation—her eyes bloodshot with petechial hemorrhaging. He was certain he could smell the stench of decay already forming about her and only after a few hours.

Life had made Dylan wise. He had ended it before she could hurt him any more than she already had. Why had she grown so cold? He didn’t know, but it really didn’t matter. Now she too would be buried in his back yard along with the many others who had tried to hurt Dylan. She had once been special but now she would become just another of the dozens of the cold, cold women now resting in the cold, cold ground.

About the Author:Thomas M. Malafarina is a horror fiction author from the South Heidelberg Twp area of Berks County, Pennsylvania. He was born July 23, 1955 in Ashland, Schuylkill County, PA where he lived until moving to Berks County in 1979.

Many of Thomas’s stories take place in his native Schuylkill County and also in Berks County settings. Thomas’s books are published by Sunbury Press of Camp Hill, PA.

Thomas’s novels include “99 Souls”, “Burn Phone” and “Eye Contact”, “Fallen Stones”, and the “Dead Kill” series. His short story collection are “13 Nasty Endings”, “Gallery of Horror”, “Malafarina Maleficarum Volume 1″, “Malafarina Maleficarum Volume 2″, “Ghost Shadows”, and “Malaformed Realities”. He also has a collection of single-panel cartoons called “Yes I Smelled It Too”. In addition, Thomas’s stories appear in many anthologies currently on sale on Amazon.

Thomas has had a life-long love of the horror and monster genre in all its form of books, movies and art. Annually, Thomas creates works of horror art, props and scenery, which he donates to a local non-profit Halloween Barn Of Terror.

Thomas lives just outside of Wernersville, PA with his wife JoAnne. They have three grown children and three grandchildren.